Peter Brown was in Manhattan’s meatpacking district in 2002 when he noticed a few hardy branches dangling from a dingy overpass near Gansevoort Street. “I thought, That’s strange,” Brown said.

In March of this year while attending the “High Chaparral” reunion at the Old Tucson Studio, Tucson, Ariz., word came that Peter Brown had passed away at the age of 80 in Phoenix, Ariz., where ...